Ingenious Pain

A Novel

by Andrew Miller

A novel set in the 18th century, about a boy who cannot feel pain--and therefore cannot imagine the pain of others. He begins his career as a freak in a carnival, but eventually becomes a successful physician. It is not until he falls in love, on a visit to Russia, that he begins to understand what pain, and also sympathy, is.

Available editions of Ingenious Pain

	9780151002580, Hardcover, Harcourt, 1997 $1.00 (Like New) Other copies of 9780151002580

	9780156006002, Paperback, Harvest Books, 1998 $1.00 (Very Good) Other copies of 9780156006002

Publisher Notes

In 1739 James Dyer is born. He never cries, does not speak for his first eleven years, and, strangest of all, he cannot feel pain. When smallpox destroys his family, he joins an itinerant quack selling bogus medicine. Then James Dyer's peculiar nature is discovered, and he is paraded as a freak before the scientific establishment. His subsequent career as a surgeon-a cold and heartless one, as he cannot empathize with his patients-is brilliant, but it is only when he meets a witchlike woman that he discovers the true nature of being human, with all its attendant sufferings and joys. Miller's novel is utterly original, a dazzling tale richly evocative of its period and gothic in its sensibilities.

Media Reviews

"'Ingenious Pain' is strange, unsettling, sad, beautiful, and profound. You can't ask for more than that."

First Line

On a hot, cloud-hemmed afternoon in August, three men cross a stable yard near the village of Cow in Devon.

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